


Withered Vine

by alisonlynn



Category: The Tarot Sequence - K.D. Edwards
Genre: Companion Bond Feelings, Kidnapping, M/M, Pining, a lot of importance given to breakfast beverages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:07:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25833997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alisonlynn/pseuds/alisonlynn
Summary: Mayan gets kidnapped and the Companion bond destroyed. Anton is willing to do anything to get him back, whether Mayan needs his help or not.
Relationships: Mayan Saint Joshua/Lord Tower | Anton Saint Joshua
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	Withered Vine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lumieerie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lumieerie/gifts).



> Happy birthday Vivi!! 
> 
> Much of the credit for this goes to my beloved betas and cheerleader Astrumiel and Egglorru
> 
> (Seriously, Strumi had to listen to me whine about this for two weeks. She is a saint)

Anton woke feeling rested. He felt weightless as he padded down the hallway in his robe and slippers, which is to say he felt only the weight of his own body rather than the press of years and responsibility. He smiled at the tea cup resting primly in its saucer in the morning room. Mayan arranged all his breakfasts with the cook and brought them to the penthouse personally, and there was always tea and an omelet when he’d slept well. If he’d tossed and turned all night, there would have been coffee and crepes, and if he’d had a nightmare it would be hot cocoa and waffles. 

He hadn’t needed the comfort of chocolate and carbs in the morning for some time. Maybe the taint of the past was finally wearing off him, like ink stains wearing off fingers. 

The omelet was perfect, as always. He wondered what Mayan had had for breakfast. 

Sometimes he wished he knew Mayan as well as Mayan knew him. Sometimes he wished Mayan understood him as little as he understood Mayan. 

Anton didn’t let himself focus on the Companion bond. If he thought about it it might open wider, and he had more discipline than that. The bond stretched between them as thin as a strand of silk cord, unbreakable and indistinct. This was the way Companion bonds were supposed to be, not whatever codependent tapestry Rune and Brand had woven with theirs. 

He felt Mayan getting closer before the elevator dinged. This sense of the space between them was all he allowed himself, strangling the bond until nothing more could get through. It was useful in battle, he justified, never mind that most of his battles took place via e-mail these days. Rune was right. War wasn’t waged on a battlefield anymore. 

“Lord Tower,” Mayan said when he strode through the glass doors to the morning room. All four walls were made of glass, allowing him to see his kitchen, lounge, and the north and east sides of the city from his breakfast table. Mayan looked stunning in the light of the rising sun, as usual. It lent his skin warmth that the harsh lighting indoors stole from him, and the planes of his face had been sculpted with the sun in mind. The Last Defense sigil woven among the strands of his hair glinted sharply, and Mayan bent easily to allow Anton to brush his fingers over it, strengthening the magic. He’d been doing it every morning for three hundred years, and now all it took was a touch. It was a healing sigil, his last defense against any injury to Mayan. If Mayan thought the magic was for Anton, well, he’d made a career of lies of omission. 

“Mayan,” Anton greeted as Mayan straightened. It was a nice day, which made it easier not to miss the warmth of him so close. In winter, when the heat of his body felt like the hot air before a summer storm, it was harder not to draw him in and bask. Nothing made the memory of the tiny hairs on Mayan’s neck stirring under his breath easier except the knowledge that his breath could stir them again tomorrow. The years stretched behind him, a master’s class in wanting that he never seemed to learn anything from, and they stretched ahead, full of both promise and dread. 

“Today’s list,” Mayan said, presenting the sheaf of paper. It was a waste, perhaps, in an era of shrinking forests and abundant internet access to still print the list every day. Mayan would e-mail it to him if he asked, and perhaps that would be better. The searchability of paper left something to be desired, after all. But if there was no need to bring a physical copy of The List, when would he see Mayan bathed in the morning sunlight? 

Anton took the paper and asked, “How was your night?” He winced. He shouldn’t have asked. He never did, but suddenly it was unbearable not to know whether Mayan had drunk tea or coffee or cocoa that morning. 

Mayan blinked, the only betrayal of his surprise. “Fine,” he said. Of course. What else had Anton expected? They were not the sort of Companions who discussed the quality of their sleep. 

“Would you like tea?” Anton asked, his mouth two steps ahead of his brain. If he’d still been a spy that sort of slip could have spelled disaster. He wondered if it was a good or bad sign that he was losing the habits of centuries. 

There was a second chair at the breakfast table, the cushion noticeably less worn than the one he was sitting on. Mayan’s eyes darted to it. The moment hung, like the space between a thunder crack and a lightning bolt, and Anton consoled himself that Mayan had considered sitting with him. 

“No, thank you,” Mayan said. “I have a great deal of work to do.” 

“Of course.” 

As Mayan turned, Anton brought his attention to the paper. There was no point watching Mayan walk away, just as there was no point avoiding it. Mayan’s legs in his suit pants would be just as long and just as seared into his eyelids either way. 

There was a wrinkle in the paper, about two thirds of the way down, as if someone had held on too tightly. It was next to the name of Jared Maskelyn, the scion of a minor house under the Magician’s domain. He developed magical technology for the Hex Court, but lately his company had made suspicious purchases and there had been several lunches at a restaurant common for celebrating successful business deals but no sign of anything to celebrate. It was this inconsistency that bought him a place so high on the list, as his research was typically uninteresting and his status unimportant. 

As the elevator began its descent Anton allowed himself a moment to wish he and Mayan _were_ the sort of Companions who shared things with each other. What had Mayan been thinking when he paused next to this name? Was it simply chance? Did Mayan think whatever nefarious activity Maskelyn was engaging in was dangerous? 

What _had_ Mayan had for breakfast that morning? 

Three things happened at the same time. 

1) The lights went out. The dawn light streaming through the big windows was enough to see by, but the emergency lights weren’t coming on. The background hum of electronics and mechanical processes were absent, leaving only the whir of Anton’s thoughts. 

2) His awareness of his sigils disappeared. He always wore at least six, in small jewelry and the string of beads he carried his pocket watch on, and they were _all gone_. Who had the resources to destroy _sigils_? Had another lich been summoned and breached their security? There was no energy to spare on that because - 

3) The Companion bond between himself and Mayan went dead. Panic gripped him. Anton was very familiar with the way the bond relaxed with unconsciousness. He knew the way Mayan’s sleeping thoughts felt when they brushed against his own, like the stirring of gauzy curtains against a windowpane. This was nothing like that. Mayan was _gone_. 

He poured his willpower down the connection and nearly collapsed against the table. Mayan was still there, a point of light at the top of a mile deep drill shaft where he was usually the sun breaking through clouds, but there. Still there. Who had the power to disrupt a Companion bond like this? Who had the audacity to try to take Mayan from him? 

Next, he touched the sigil in his earring and breathed a sigh of relief. The magic was still there, he just couldn’t access it. That settled things, the technology required to dampen sigil magic was new and the secret well kept. His mind darted to that wrinkle in the paper with grim resignation. The destruction of a minor house was going to be such a _waste_. 

He needed to get out of range of the disrupter and he needed to get to Mayan. With the elevators down, the fastest way was… His eyes drifted to the windows and a smile crept across his face. Well, Mayan hadn’t given him these warded slippers for nothing. Clouds had been rolling in, his Aspect drawn to the surface by his rising anger, and an outstretched fist was all it took to call a bolt of lightning to shatter the window. He took a running start, and he leapt. 

He was too late. By the time he reached the ground (leaving a small crater in the sidewalk but himself unharmed), the car that carried his distant sense of Mayan was around the corner, tail lights smearing red in the rain. Anton sent another surge down the connection to stop himself from running after it. His feet buzzed with the need for motion, but it would be so undignified. Mayan was already going to be furious about the broken window. 

Mayan was still there. 

Being able to sense magic was a specialized skill, and Anton had never been good at it. He’d had five centuries to practice and most scions would be humbled by his ability, but he lacked Rune’s innate talent. As always, he allowed himself half a second to marvel at what an Arcana his protege had the potential to become, then set it aside. His own skills might not be on par with Rune’s, but they were enough to determine that the sigil disrupter covered the whole building, and that the signal was coming from the roof. A lightning strike took care of it. 

Mayan was going to be _so mad_ about the breach in security it required to get something like that to the roof. Anton mentally prepared to hear about it for the next three decades and vehemently refused to think that he might not get the chance. _What had they done to Mayan where was he did they hurt him would the bond recover -_

Anton pulled himself back in. The storm raged, wind snarling down the narrow streets and whipping his robes around his calves. Rain lashed the windows and chased the pedestrians away. He thought about the carpet cleaning the penthouse was going to need and sighed. 

He needed more sigils, _specific_ sigils. And he needed the address of the warehouse Maskelyn had purchased through backchannels two weeks previous. 

With another sigh, he pushed open the building’s front door. He hated when dramatic exits were wasted. 

~O~ 

“Lord Tower!” cried the guard on the warehouse, just like the previous three guards had done. He made the same gurgling noise as he died, too. 

Maskelyn was an idiot. Anton had known this, based on the fact that he had tried to kidnap an Arcana’s Companion, but he’d thought the fact that the attempt had been successful might point to some hidden cleverness. It appeared to have been dumb luck, which he hated more. He’d gotten complacent. 

There were only four guards on the warehouse. No magic. No non-human guards. It was the sort of mission he’d set for Rune when he was young, when he’d had to arrange the entire thing himself because no one would actually leave something valuable so undefended. 

The door was locked, but Anton had enough blasting spells saved that this was no problem. 

When the dust settled, he saw Mayan sitting at a table in the middle of the room, watching him with his head cocked. 

“What are you doing here?” Mayan asked. His brows drew together in warning. “Have you been using your Aspect?” 

Anton took a deep breath, letting the fear and adrenaline wash through him and away, his extremities tingling unpleasantly. _Mayan was ok_. Outside, the wind fell away. The sound of the rain gentled from a howl to a soothing hum. “I am embarrassed for us,” he said. “This infant didn’t even put you in a proper cell?” He drank Mayan in with his eyes. There was a bruise over one temple, but he appeared otherwise unharmed. Instead of his neat suit with doubtless hundreds of improvised weapons in it, he’d been changed into a pair of loose pants and a t-shirt. Anton didn’t think he’d ever seen him in something so casual. He burned at the thought of someone _undressing_ Mayan, maybe even while he was unconscious. 

Mayan raised an eyebrow. “He did. But I’ve been awake nearly fifteen minutes. The cell didn’t last five.” 

Oh right. Sometimes Anton forgot that Mayan was even more dangerous than he was. 

Mayan’s expression didn’t change, but something in his cheek jumped. “You didn’t come here to rescue me, did you?” 

Anton opened his mouth but before he could say anything Mayan interrupted, something he thought was disrespectful and so reserved for times when he felt Anton was not acting in such a way as to earn respect. “Because I know you are better than that at resource management. _I_ protect _you_ , remember? This moron is not worthy of your intervention.” 

Anton said, “He took you from me!” 

“I am not a toy you are unwilling to share,” Mayan said. He hefted something in his hands, a bit of metal that looked like it had been torn from a cell door. 

Because he was thinking about the logistics of a human tearing apart a cell door, he didn’t think about what he said next. “The bond was dead! I thought you were-” he stopped himself before he could finish _‘gone, forever’._

Mayan softened, just a little. "Yes. The bond." He quirked a smile. "Good thing I had this or I’d have assumed they’d somehow managed to kill you.” He fingered the sigil in his hair. Sigils had a tendency to act up with the death of their owners. Something in his jaw jumped, and he said, offhand, “It is a bit odd, for it to be completely silent." 

_A bit odd_. Yes. That was one way to describe it. Anton felt like he'd lost his dominant arm. 

"It's too bad we had to go to all this trouble," Mayan continued. 

Anton told himself that it was the missing bond that kept him from understanding a word Mayan was saying, but his Companion had always been inscrutable to him. 

Mayan must have correctly interpreted his confused blink, because he added with an expression Anton had seen before but never understood, "You never liked having me in your head." 

The thing was, Mayan did not like Anton anymore. This had been clear to him for many years, starting with his disaster of a marriage and culminating in the incident between his son and Rune's Companion. Anton had said that they relied on the bond too much, that Companions were not meant to be so intertwined, and while it was the same thing their weapons master had told them all those years ago, it wasn’t the reason he’d insisted they close the bond. He just couldn’t bear to feel Mayan’s hatred. 

He had been hated before of course. But this was _Mayan_ , who he trusted and cared for more than anyone else in the world. If Mayan hated him, he probably deserved it. 

So technically Mayan was correct, Anton didn’t like having him in his head. However, he found he liked it even less when Mayan was absent. 

“I’ll find out how to put it back,” Anton swore. Just that morning he’d been congratulating himself on losing old habits, and now it was time to break out his old skill set. He hoped for expediency that Maskelyn gave up the information quickly, but the simmering rage low in his gut wouldn’t mind if it took awhile. “Are you hanging around here for a reason? We have a minor house to destroy.” 

“Jared Maskelyn is due to arrive to inspect his guards’ fine work any minute now,” Mayan said. “I thought I’d save on travel expenses.”

Anton wanted to heave a deep sigh at the decapitated corpse closest to them, but it _was_ difficult to find good soldiers these days. 

Mayan coughed. Anton snapped his attention back to him. “They may have already let slip how to fix the bond,” he said, not as though he wanted Anton to know this information, but more like he couldn’t allow himself to withhold it. 

“Oh?” Anton asked, trying to imbue the word with all the ‘then why the fuck are you only mentioning this now’ that he could manage. 

Mayan ticked an eyebrow upwards judgmentally, which meant he’d succeeded. “Perhaps we can discuss this at a later time.” 

Anton finally left his post in the doorway and settled pointedly in the seat across from Mayan. It was a bitter mimicry of what he’d wanted that morning. There was a thrill to sitting with his back to the doorway. No matter how Mayan felt about him, he would always protect Anton’s blind spots. “I have time now.” 

Mayan gave him the familiar blank face of ‘alright, you’re the Arcana, but one day you’ll see that you should have listened to me’. Usually he was right, but Anton _needed_ the bond back more than he needed his next breath. It may not be much, but he had survived on it for a century. It had never occurred to him to fear _less_. 

Mayan took a breath. “It’s not complicated. Maskelyn stumbled upon the technique for withering Companion bonds - that’s what they called it, Withering - while he was working on the sigil dampener. The bond is still there, we just can’t access it.”

He paused for long enough that Anton prompted him with, “Yes?” 

“In order to reopen it, we would need to flood the bond, force it as wide as possible.” Mayan wasn’t looking at him. His gaze was locked somewhere past Anton’s left shoulder. 

“I see. We should do it now, before Maskelyn arrives,” Anton said. 

“Anton,” Mayan said, and it was the first slip, the first sign he’d given that this was bothering him. Mayan never used his first name. “We’d be completely open to each other. Nothing would be hidden.” 

“I understood the implications,” Anton said, perhaps a little snappishly. No, he didn’t particularly want to relive Mayan’s fury, and he dreaded the thought of feeling the cold disdain that must have grown in the meantime, but his skin felt itchy with the need to have Mayan back, in whatever small way he could have him. The face Mayan would make when he realized Anton was still in love with him, distaste and disgust mixed with pity, stung, but it couldn’t be helped. He was pretty sure Mayan already knew anyway. 

Mayan closed his eyes as if asking for patience. “Alright. On the count of three.” 

Anton waited until Mayan opened his eyes again and then caught and held them with his own. “One, two, three.” 

It felt like flexing a muscle he hadn’t used in awhile, or swimming upwards towards the light while his lungs burned for air, or laying awake at night trying not to think about Mayan. It felt like squeezing into an ill-fitting suit, or pouring over separate pieces of information that refused to fit together, or crouching in an alley in the rain trying to coax a stray dog out from behind a dumpster. It felt like asking a question he’d asked a thousand times and not expecting an answer. 

Then the bond connected. It felt like falling off a bridge, throwing a hand above him for rescue and knowing he would be caught. It felt like a hot drink after a long day. It felt like the warmth of a familiar body behind him as he went into battle. It felt like a comfort he had never dared ask for. Mayan’s brown eyes had a depth to them that Anton hadn’t known to miss, as if there had been a shutter behind them that had been suddenly lifted. “You feel the same?” Anton whispered. They’d drawn close while the bond was healing. He barely needed any volume for Mayan to understand. He certainly didn’t need words, but he used them anyway. He wanted to hear Mayan say it. 

“You thought I hated you?” Mayan said, his voice nothing but a rumble. Its cadence picked Anton up and swept him away, like a loose branch in a flash flood. 

Then the tap of impractical business shoes on cement interrupted. 

“Ah, Lord Tower. Have you come to hear my demands for your Companion’s safe return?” 

The bond transmitted ‘this guy cannot possibly be this stupid, can he?’ just fine, but they shared a moment of world weary eye contact anyway. Then Anton turned so that Mayan, hidden from view by shadows and Anton’s body, could wave. 

“Feel free to make any demands you like,” Mayan said. “Though I think in this context they’d be called ‘confessions’.” 

“Do we really have to listen to his supervillain spiel?” Anton asked, suddenly exhausted beyond measure. He wanted an answer to his question, damnit. “We could just kill him and get it done with.” 

“No, no. I’m curious as to what he thought was worth inciting your wrath,” Mayan said. He shifted sideways to fix Maskelyn with a stare. If it wasn’t as intimidating in white cotton as it would have been in a suit jacket or tac vest, well, it was still pretty intimidating. “Unless the History department at Magnus Academy is sorely lacking, he must have known what would happen.” 

Maskelyn seemed to notice the dead bodies for the first time. Anton was so embarrassed for himself and Mayan. No one could ever know that this idiot had gotten to them. “But - you’re old! You’re complacent! It’s been decades since you saw a real threat!” 

“Let us know if you find one,” Anton muttered. He wished Maskelyn was a little less right. 

“You are an infant,” Mayan said. “If you saw the sort of ‘real threat’ Lord Tower deals with on a daily basis, you would shit your big-boy-scion underpants.” 

Anton turned a laugh into a cough. It was good to hear Mayan defend him, though he would still prefer they wrapped this up quickly so they could finish their conversation. 

“There is a reason the humans associate the Tower card with destruction,” Mayan continued. “The Dagger Court has long been the weapon of the Emperor, and Lord Tower is stronger and more ruthless than anyone who came before him. Before the war, he controlled cities the way someone like you might control pieces on a chessboard. Just because the battleground of our new nation has changed, does not make him any less the man who once decided the fate of empires.” 

Mayan paused to glance at Anton, his eyes softening. “In fact, he has risen from the ashes of Old Atlantis to become something even better. He’s learned restraint, and mercy.” 

Anton sucked in a breath. The core of their conflict had been Mayan’s conviction that he was too harsh, not only on Brand but also his own children. That the long war and the years before it had made him forget his humanity. He’d worked so hard over the last few decades, examining the reasoning behind his decisions, second guessing all his actions. To know that Mayan had looked into his soul and found mercy was - 

He needed this encounter to be over. 

“Though honestly,” Mayan said. “In your case I think we could dispense with the mercy.” 

Anton agreed completely. Maskelyn, in another fit of ineptitude, had stepped within arm’s reach. It was the work of a moment to grab the gun out of his waistband, remove the safety, and shoot him in the head. "Perhaps I can demonstrate mercy and restraint by not destroying his entire House, as I had planned." 

Mayan huffed. “I didn’t mean to just shoot him. I wanted to interrogate him.” 

Anton ejected the clip and tossed it in one direction and the gun in the other. “He wasn’t going to tell us anything useful.” 

Mayan got up from the table and crouched beside Maskelyn. “He didn’t come up with this himself. If we knew what he hoped to gain we might be able to figure out who was behind it.” 

“If we can’t figure that out on our own, we don’t deserve to rule the Dagger Throne.” 

Mayan’s smile came in stages, like he kept trying and failing to suppress it. Anton knew why. The bond was so open he felt like he could step right through and into Mayan’s head. A flash of heat, like a cherry bomb, came through it every time one of them used the word ‘we’. 

“Will you?” Anton asked. He needed Mayan to _say it_ , damnit. 

“Will I what?” Mayan said, because the man Anton was in love with was a little shit. 

“Will you rule the Dagger Throne with me?” The bond was open, Mayan could feel everything. He had to know how Anton had longed to ask this question since they were young and stupid and innocent, back before what he felt for Mayan started to feel like the only honest thing about him. 

Mayan quirked an eyebrow and stood, towering over Anton. Mayan was the only person who ever made him feel small. “I’ve been helping you rule our court for four hundred years.” His amusement was sunlight breaking through a leafy canopy, and when he relented it was a cool breeze that brought with it the promise of fresh rainwater in a drought. “I have loved you since before I knew what love was, and I have continued to love you despite learning what it meant. I loved you when we were free to roam the world together, and I loved you when you ascended to your birthright, binding us to the Court we both owe our duty and allegiance. I loved you when you had no choice but to serve the Emperor in whatever way he required, and I loved you when you chose to marry a woman you knew to be unfit. I loved you when we fought back to back and I loved you when we rebuilt our lives side by side. I loved you when I agreed with you and when I disagreed with you. And,” he heaved a theatrical sigh, “I even love you now, when you are asking me this in a dingy warehouse surrounded by corpses rather than your perfectly comfortable penthouse.” 

Anton was an Arcana, a veteran of countless conflicts, and the spy who defined all spies who came after him. He prided himself on his poker face, his poise, his composure. He couldn’t get enough air into his lungs to speak. “Yes,” he gasped. “You. Love you. Too.” 

Mayan’s face went soft and fond in a way that Anton had never seen before and resolved to see again as often as possible. He reached out a hand and Anton gratefully took it. The shock of Mayan’s skin against his sent air rushing back in and he swayed, brought inexorably into Mayan’s orbit. Mayan caught him, as he always caught him, but this time he didn’t let go. 

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Anton asked. 

“Why didn’t I say anything? Why didn’t _you_? I thought my feelings were perfectly clear.” 

“I thought _my_ feelings were perfectly clear!” 

“Which of your actions should I have interpreted as passionate, enduring love?” 

Anton couldn’t answer him, because it wasn’t one specific action that he thought had given him away. It was in the details, the way he had never been able to tear his eyes away even though Mayan worked so hard to fade into the background. It was in the tone of his voice when he said Mayan’s name, like he couldn’t bear to let the word out of his mouth. It was in the way he relaxed when he felt Mayan nearby and the way he ached when they were apart. It was in the sigil woven into Mayan’s hair, a failsafe, guarding against his ever needing to face the world alone. 

“Why don’t we go home and I’ll give you an action that you can’t misinterpret?” 

~O~

Mayan looked just as good at sunset as he did at dawn. The windows in Anton’s west facing bedroom were smaller and the bombproof glass warped the light, but it suited Mayan. Anton wanted to see him in the light of his bedroom windows every day for the rest of forever. The mugs of hot chocolate Mayan had prepared clinked as he settled back against the pillows. Anton hadn’t realised Mayan personally made his morning beverages, but the thought warmed him as much as the drink did. Even when things between them were a mess of misunderstandings, their bond a tangled web, Mayan had still taken care of him. 

Anton promised himself that he would watch the process carefully, and the next time Mayan had a nightmare, he would make him hot chocolate. Nothing could replace the years Mayan had woken alone, but he swore that he would never again have to wonder how Mayan’s night had been. 

Mayan huffed a laugh. “I can’t believe you never realized.” 

Anton drew a finger down Mayan’s cheek. “I seem to have not realized a lot of things, my dearest. Which of them are you teasing me about now?” 

Mayan made that glorious happy, fond face again. “I knew when you had slept badly because I had as well. Without our conscious suppression, the bond was free to share as it willed. Technically, we have never in our lives slept apart.” 

Anton took the mug from Mayan’s hands and set it on the nightstand. “That is a technicality I mean to take literally from now on.” 

Neither dawn’s light nor sunset could compare to the gleam of happiness in Mayan’s eyes. “I’m alright with that.” 


End file.
